Touting big declines in crime so far in 2025, police in Prince George’s County, Maryland, announced their looming summer crime initiative as the school year winds down and crime tends to tick up.
“Our summer crime initiative is built upon the pillars of crime prevention, community engagement, collaboration with our public safety partners and a focused enforcement,” Police Chief Malik Aziz said.
This year, Aziz said they’ll be focusing on smaller parts of the county.
“What we found is that crimes generally take place in small pockets,” Aziz said. “So we may have a very good area, but a small pocket of crime that needs addressing, and not the entire area.”
At a news conference on Wednesday, Aziz showed a map of the county divided into 1,588 different hexagons to help illustrate that point. Each hexagon was 1,000 meters in diameter. Some of the areas included, but aren’t limited to, Largo Town Center, the intersection of Cherry Hill Road and Powder Mill Road, Brooks Drive and Marlboro Pike, Kentland and Brandywine Crossing.
“The top 25 hexagons is then where we deploy and we focus our police or our resources to drive down those crimes,” he said. “Work with the community leaders, work with the businesses and engage with all public safety partners across the region in order for us to drive down crime.”
The county is also creating a bike patrol this summer to add extra officers on the streets, and even non-patrolling officers will have to spend two weeks this summer on patrol duties.
Aziz also highlighted the increased community engagement in recent years, with more people providing tips to Crime Solvers that help close cases. He and acting County Executive Tara Jackson said that continues to be a crucial aspect for driving down crime.
“The government cannot be everywhere at every time,” Jackson said. “There are so many community members that partner with us on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s calling to give us a tip or saying we see something that seems unusual. And so we’re asking the people in our community to continue to do that.”
“We cannot do it alone. I cannot emphasize that enough,” she added. “We need our community, our parents, our grandparents, our neighbors, to all take this on with us together. Because, as the chief said, it is a smaller group of young people that are really causing problems in our community.”
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